I am ready to see the Earth from the Moon and hop over to Mars for a visit, but we as beings seem to be regressing into darkness. We have been so busy looking at each other that we have failed miserably at talking to one another—despite the multitude of ways we can communicate.

West Yorkshire is undervalued. West Yorkshire encompasses the geological diversity of England.We have the Yorkshire Dales; Harden Beck waterfalls; the quaint Gaddings Dam beach; Fairy Cave;dark and historical coal mines (the museum in Wakefield), and that is a small portion of our beauty.The various people of West Yorkshire can offer the same splendour.

The United Kingdom as we know it today, was built from the commerce of enslaving other humans.There is no way around this truth and no way of separating our worlds. We all created the UK, aswell as other places, yet some of us have not had our contributions valued. We have citizens in our region who historically have had no choice but to find alternate means of living andloving—surviving. People of colour were not priorities to power structures within West Yorkshiretherefore it became necessary to create places and spaces where their humanity came first. Ourregion is better because of our mixture. We have more commonalities than differences—I guarantee it!

From mental health services to building neighbourhoods, organisations such as Touchstone Support; Racial Justice Network; Kirklees Local TV; Nari Ekta; and People Powered Homes have been doing their part in our region to move us all forward. These organisations and many more are made up of people from Bengal; St. Kitts & Nevis; Vietnam; Montserrat; Bahrain; Kenya; and the US (like me) who saw the love and the hurt within our region and decided we can make it better—we must make it better.

West Yorkshire is at a crossroads. There is a centuries-long momentum of underdevelopment, division, and inhumanity that is so engrained one has to just repeat a few polarising phrases and whole elections are won — not from neighbourhood communications but fashionable complaints. Itis time we acknowledge that we all have value, therefore West Yorkshire has value. If our evolutionis revolutionary, then deem it a necessary component of alternative practice.

Tiffany R. Holloman
Dr. Tiffany R. Holloman is a Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University and Co-Director of Same Skies Think Tank. Both historian and sociologist, Tiffany’s research examines gender and power from Early Modern Europe to contemporary society; highlighting the fallacy of prestige in institutions and the embeddedness of racism.